Quotes from book
The Trouble With Being Born

Name: The Trouble With Being Born
Author: Emil M. Cioran

Emil M. Cioran Original title De l'inconvénient d'être né (French)

“Self-knowledge — the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“There was a time when time did not yet exist. … The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“The farther men get from God, the farther they advance into the knowledge of religions.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“"What do you do from morning to night?" "I endure myself."”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“To have committed every crime but that of being a father.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“What are you waiting for in order to give up?”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“It's not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“An aphorism? Fire without flames. Understandable that no one tries to warm himself at it.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“To think that so many have succeeded in dying!”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“There is no false sensation.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression. I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of ataraxy.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst, I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start, flinging myself into misfortune long before it occurred.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“This very second has vanished forever, lost in the anonymous mass of the irrevocable. It will never return. I suffer from this and I do not. Everything is unique — and insignificant.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

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